Legal News

Subprime Legal: A Look at Who?s Repping Former Credit Suisse Brokers

By Amir Efrati

Yesterday we told you that federal prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York, in Brooklyn, are considering filing securities fraud charges two former Credit Suisse brokers for lying to investors about auction rate securities they were sold.

It turns out the brokers’ lawyers, both former Eastern District prosecutors, and have had plenty of legal excitement in recent years.

Paul Weinstein of Emmet, Marvin & Martin, who is defending former Credit Suisse broker Eric Butler, made his name prosecuting mobsters in the “Five Families” of New York. (As deputy chief of the criminal division, he worked a few feet away from one of the prosecutors currently handling the Credit Suisse case.)

Before he left the EDNY in January, and after 18 years, Weinstein (Colgate University ‘81, Syracuse Law ‘85 and pictured, left) helped investigate two former Bear Stearns hedge fund managers in what culminated last month in the first securities fraud indictments stemming from the credit crisis. The 48-year-old Weinstein prosecuted more than 100 mobsters, including Vincent “Chin” Gigante and members and associates of the Genovese and Colombo crime families, among others.

Then there’s Paul Hastings’ Kenneth Breen (Boston College ’89, Boston College Law ’92 and pictured, right), who is representing former Credit Suisse broker Julian Tzolov. A six-year veteran of EDNY, Breen, recently represented Bernard Kerik in a New York State prosecution, where the former the former New York City police commissioner pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor charges for money gifts and a loan while he was a city official in the 1990’s. (Breen was barred by a federal judge from representing Kerik in an overlapping federal prosecution because he could have been called as a witness.)

Breen, 41 years old, who was deputy chief of EDNY’s business and securities fraud section before he left in 2005, led the well-known insider trading prosecution of Anthony Elgindy and former FBI agent Jeffrey Royer. He is currently representing David Brooks, former CEO of DHB Industries, who was indicted on securities fraud charges by EDNY prosecutors last year.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on July 10, 2008 (boomark / email).